We Are It: Community Power in Our Time

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

We are what we’re waiting for. Change begins in community.

But how does this happen? How can the empowerment, connection, and the sense of belonging beyond citizenship that can be found in community organising translate into real policy-making?

We invite you to explore ways to bridge that gap. and to spend an hour thinking about what community power means in our time with three speakers working at the heart of these questions: Jeremy Corbyn, Kate Pickett, and Oliver Escobar.

Wherever we go from here, communities will be at the heart of it.

Our speakers:

Jeremy Corbyn is a socialist MP, founder and director of the Peace and Justice Project. He has served for 40 years as MP for Islington North in London, was twice elected leader of the Labour Party and is a Parliamentary Member of the Council of Europe. He is a lifelong campaigner for peace, justice and human rights and has been awarded prizes for promoting peace, including the Seán MacBride Peace Prize for his sustained and powerful political work for disarmament and peace.

Professor Kate Pickett trained in biological anthropology at University of Cambridge, nutritional sciences at Cornell University and epidemiology at UC-Berkeley. She is currently Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences, where she leads the Public Health & Society research group and Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, all at the University of York. She is an academic co-director of Health Equity North.

Kate is a Fellow of the RSA and of the UK Faculty of Public Health and the Academy of Social Sciences. She is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of the award-winning and best-selling The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). The Spirit Level was awarded Publication of the Year by the Political Studies Association, chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman, and one of the top 100 books of the century by the Guardian. She is a co-founder and patron of The Equality Trust. In 2023, Kate received an OBE for services to societal equality.

Oliver Escobar is Professor of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh. He combines research and practice on participatory and deliberative democracy, community empowerment and the governance of the future. He co-directed CRITIQUE (Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought) and co-leads on public engagement at Behavioural Research UK, and political economy at INSPIRE - Intersectional Spaces of Participation. Oliver authored Public Dialogue and Deliberation (2011), and co-edited the Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance (2019) and Climate Assemblies: New Civic Institutions for a Climate-Changed World (2025). Before academia, he worked in construction, fishing, retail, radio and literature.

*Please note that masks will be required at this event (as with all Lighthouse events).

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

*Events are £6 or free -we completely understand paying for one or two events and then getting free spots for others. The Radical Book Fair is entirely bookshop run and ticket sales are vital to keeping the fair sustainable and paying all our speakers so all support is heartily welcome!

*Featured books: The book & ticket option will select the most recently published book at any given event, if you’re not sure which book you want or don’t want that featured book, then buy a £6 voucher ticket that can be used for any of the books below.

*If you'd like to help make the book fair accessible to more folks, please consider adding to our pay-it-forward fund HERE.